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Sound Cards?

10-27-2011, 10:08 AM

I'm currently running a Creative X-fi Xtreme music edition card and it does not play well with BF3. Not sure if it's the case with all X-fi cards, but mine has 3 audio modes - gaming, entertainment, and audio creation. Normally I leave this on gaming, unless I'm using my surround setup. The problem is that whenever I load into a server I loose ALL sound and microphone. I have to quit the game, switch from gaming to entertainment mode, switch back then it's usually alright after that. Until I close the game again. After log play sessions switching back and forth it'll just die completely forcing a reboot.

I didn't really want to buy a new sound card but I'm fed up with this one. It sounds great but I cannot deal with driver crap to get it to work. What are some good cards in the sub $100 range?

It's obvious and I'm guessing you already tried it, but you should update the drivers if you haven't already. If you're looking at new sound cards, there was a really good, cheap model from Asus called the Xonar DG. It was $30 and offered great sound quality, but it's out of stock at newegg right now so you'd have to look around to find it. If you can't, I would look at some of the other Xonar models from Asus.

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Battlefield 3 has it's own audio engine that different from others so it doesn't use the EAX and sound card to it's full potential. You can get the DG for $15 if you look around, I know Amazon had it at that price for awhile. I was lucky and was able to get the X-Fi Titanium HD for $50 at Best Buy on a pricing error that occurred for about 24 hours a few weeks ago. I know of some people who bought 20-30 of them and are selling them for $70, and even at that price it's a steal. Also, there are guides all around headfi that go over configuring your card for best possible performance. Most guides I've seen agree that audio creation is best for music and gaming for gaming (although since BF3 doesn't utilize the same things, audio creation still may be better).

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Under Windows playback/recording devices go into your advanced setting for any input/output your using and set the default format (under advanced tab) to 48000hz or below. I have not had a problem running this higher but this sometimes can be a factor. I have an X-fi Fatality Platinum and have not experienced any problems with sound so far.

Creative drivers have never been the best and can be a bit difficult to deal with however don't give up too quickly.

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I have the X-Fi Platinum too and have no issues. I run entertainment mode will all options turned off (SVM Off, EAX off, CMSS-3D off, X-Fi Crystalizer off).
It is at 96kHz sampling in Win recording devices setup.
My mic is on LineIn2 (front panel) and my headphones are on the front panel jack too.